Cell Reports . . . Wen Jinsheng and others reveal the protective mechanisms of dengue virus/Zika virus cross-reactive CD4 plus T cells.

Dengue virus and Zika virus belong to Flaviviridae and belong to single strand positive strand RNA virus.similar to dengue virus, Zika virus infection mainly causes mild symptoms such as fever and rash, but pregnant women infected with Zika virus may cause fetal microcephaly.in addition, they have the following similarities: they can be transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, the epidemic areas overlap, and there is a high degree of genomic and amino acid sequence homology.then, it is worth studying whether there is cross immune reaction between the two viruses and how their functions are.in 2017, the team of shresta Sujan from La Jolla Institute of immunology and Wen Jinsheng of Wenzhou Medical University (now working in Ningbo University) cooperated in nature Microbiology (Wen Jingsheng, et al. 2017, 2:17036) and nature communications (Wen Jinsheng, et al. 2017), 8 (1): 1459) reported that: the immunity induced by dengue virus infection in mice can protect mice against Zika virus attack; dengue virus / Zika virus cross reactive antibody can enhance Zika virus infection in vivo and in vitro (ADE effect); and dengue virus / Zika virus cross reactive CD8 can protect mice against Zika virus attack+ T cells can protect mice against the lethal dose of Zika virus, which can significantly increase the survival rate of mice.however, the role of dengue virus / Zika virus cross reactive CD4 + T cells is unclear.on April 28, 2020, the team of shresta Sujan and Wen Jinsheng [CO first author (ranked first) and parallel corresponding author] continued to publish an article on cell reports: CD4 + T cells cross reactive with dengue and Zika viruses protect against Zika virus infection, revealing the protection mechanism of dengue virus / Zika virus cross reactive CD4 + T cells.in this study, four cross reactive CD4 + T cell epitopes of dengue virus / Zika virus were identified by flow cytometry based on HLA-DRB1 * 0101 transgenic mice infected with dengue virus or Zika virus, and CD4 + T cell clearance test was used to confirm the cross reactive CD4 of dengue virus / Zika virus+ The results showed that CD4 + T cells immunized with T cell epitope peptide could significantly reduce the titer of Zika virus in serum, liver and brain tissue of mice; injection of monoclonal antibody neutralizing IFN - or TNF into mice could reverse the effect of dengue virus / Zika virus cross reactive CD4 + T cells on reducing the titer of Zika virus+ No significant antibody against Zika virus was detected in the sera of mice immunized with T cell epitope peptide.these results indicate that dengue virus / Zika virus cross reactive CD4 + T cells can play an anti Zika virus infection role by secreting IFN - or TNF.in view of the fact that the cross reactive antibodies of flaviviruses may mediate the effect of ade in heterovirus infection, and cross reactive T cells mainly play a cross protective effect, so dengue virus and Zika virus vaccines rich in cross reactive T cell epitopes may be safer and more effective.original link: plate maker: Ke